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Saturday, May 18, 2013

The Creepy Things Inside Your Horse

Note: Only horse people will find this post
interesting. The rest of you might find it completely revolting.

As easy as it is to shove a tube of dewormer down a horse’s
throat (depending on your skill and your horse’s opinion, of course), doing this
without education on your horse’s wormload now goes against recommendations by
most horse veterinary authorities.

No caption necessary.

Because those ugly litte SOBs that live in our horse’s
internal organs have started to develop immunity to our dewormers, the new recommended
standard is that we test our horses’ manure for the presences of
parasites, then customize a deworming program for each horse.

It sounds easy, but the gap in this system is the ability to
get manure to the vet lab, of course. There’s the wait for manure, so you
know exactly which horse’s poo ball belongs to whom, then there’s the getting
it to the lab before it expires. Most of us don't drive by our equine
vet's place on a regular basis.

For me, the above conundrum, combined with the usual busy
schedule, resulted in my not deworming my horses since last fall. So,
when the vet came to do routine health care recently, I seized the opportunity,
along with a few poo balls. Well, I seized one that Starlight left while
the vet was there. The vet actually seized one each, from both Hudson’s
and DeCato’s, um, what a cruder person might call poop-shoots.

It was quite a sight, and there was a moment when I thought
that the vet’s arm would become a permanent appendage in Hudson’s apparently
extremely tight bung. Both Hudson and DeCato were still stoned from
their dental work when the fecal matter was obtained, so they didn’t react too
obviously, but apparently Hudson was groggily trying to prevent the vet’s hand
from grabbing anything in there before she was ready to give it up.

Eventually, though, three manure balls were sealed in
baggies, labeled with names, and off with the vet they went. The lab
would count the number of worm eggs present (or "shed") in each
mare's manure to determine their level of infestation.

In a week, I received the results, together with a
recommended deworming protocol for each of my mares.

DeCato

Strongyle - 450
eggs/gram

Parascaris - <25
eggs/gram

Anoplocephala -
<25 eggs/gram

Hudson

Strongyle - 275 eggs/gram

Parascaris - <25
eggs/gram

Anoplocephala -
<25 eggs/gram

Starlight

Strongyle - 125
eggs/gram

Parascaris - <25
eggs/gram

Anoplocephala -
<25 eggs/gram

Recommendations:

Starlight is considered to be a low shedder. This
means that less than 200 eggs/gram were found in the sample we processed.
Our deworming plan for Starlight would be to deworm twice yearly, once
with ivermectin and once with an ivermectin/praziquantel product (such as Zimectrin
Gold).

DeCato and Hudson are considered to be Moderate Shedders.
This means that they scored more than 200 eggs/gram but less than 900
eggs/gram in the samples we processed. Our deworming recommendation for
them would be four times early alternating between ivermectin, oxibendazole,
and pyrantel pamoate.

After reviewing these and checking into the best times to do
the dewormings, I find I'm a little off in terms of optimal timing.
However, I'll give everyone their first worm paste this weekend, then work
toward the recommended schedule.

Well, there you have it. The only thing I really did
wrong here was to google each of the parasites named in the results. Even
though two of them are so low as to be considered "non-detectable," I
still had to look-up pictures of them.

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When we moved from the Northern Tier to the Southern Tier, we brought our horses. I always knew there must be was a lot to do with horses in the Twin Tiers, but how the heck could I learn about those activities? Thus, out of that need, this blog was born. You can find the most comprehensive schedule of Twin Tiers horse activities, and catch my ever-changing story, right here, at the Twin Tiers Horse!